Higher Learning Commission
Dr. Gary Kappel, Associate Vice
President for Academic Affairs, Perry E. and Aleece C. Gresham Chair in
Humanities, and Bethany’s Accreditation Liaison Officer, attended the
annual meeting of the Higher Learning Commission, Bethany’s regional
accrediting agency, in Chicago March 31-April 3. He participated in
numerous sessions on the commission’s new process for accreditation,
called Pathways, and the new criteria for accreditation which go into
effect on January 1, 2013. Bethany will join the Pathways process
mid-stream, as it were, as Bethany’s next scheduled re-affirmation
occurs in 2018-19.
Dr. Kappel also attended the keynote session
featuring Dr. Robert Sternberg, a noted Psychologist and expert in the
area of assessment of student learning, as well as a number of other
sessions concerning assessment and developing dashboards for
benchmarking key performance indicators of the college.
While at the meeting, Kappel visited with former student and Bethany
alumnus, Dr. Jason Hartz, ’00, a History major who now teaches and does
institutional research work at Adrian College in Michigan. Jason’s
wife, Dr. Carissa Massey, ’00, is a tenured professor in Art History at
Adrian. They just welcomed the birth of their first child, Ruby, a few
months ago.
